Throughout this application various patents and publications are referenced and citations are provided in parentheses. The disclosure of these patents and publications in their entireties are hereby incorporated by reference into this application in order to more fully describe the state of the art to which this invention pertains.
Many marine natural products contain the 2-aminoimidazole substructure. Certain members of this class of compounds appear to be biogenetically related, having diverged from a common, yet unidentified intermediate. Since the majority of these marine products have been isolated from depths ranging from 30 to 800 meters below sea level, metabolite availability has been a problem for chemical and biochemical investigations. Minute amounts contained in the marine source make it impractical to obtain suitable quantities of material necessary for further study. The present invention provides versatile and efficient methods of synthesizing these metabolites, and provides access to new compounds derived therefrom with anti-cancer, anti-hypertensive, anti-microbial and anti-viral properties. Certain new compounds are useful to treat central nervous system disorders such as shock, Parkinson's disease and ischemia.